Summary
Widow’s Bay sets a new high-water mark in “Seasickness”, a wonderful chapter full of comedy, suspense, tight writing, and brilliant performances.
Even though it follows directly from the end of Tom passing out from his mushroom trip, it’s very obvious why Apple TV decided to air Episode 7 of Widow’s Bay alongside the explanatory flashback chapter. At once a sequel to both the present-day and historical storylines, “Seasickness” is the season’s new high-water mark, in more ways than one, delivering hilarious comedy, some quietly chilling moments, fantastic writing, and superb performances, all while fleshing out the supernatural mystery and whatever more personal ones Tom is hiding at home. It’s a shame more people aren’t talking about this show, since it’s one of 2026’s very best.
We already knew that the mushrooms growing on the island were strong. When Tom finally wakes up with his face still on the toilet, he has been asleep for 24 hours and has missed some fairly significant developments. When he finally shuffles to the Historical Society, summoned by Patricia, it turns out that one of them was Wyck exhuming Richard Warren’s body. And, as predicted, he was still alive. Matthew Rhys’s reactions to being shown the coffin in the corner and being told the living Richard is in the bedroom upstairs are truly brilliant comedy. Richard will only communicate with the Lord Island Protector, which by default is now Tom. All Patricia could get out of him were a few exchanged notes (Tom flicks through them when he goes upstairs; highlights include “Hello, I am Patricia”, and “Are you mad at something I said?”).
Tom needs to convince Richard to open the cylinder, which turns out to be rather easy. Richard can speak after all, and regales Tom with the story behind the little sheaf of paper rolled inside the cylinder. As the villagers predicted, it is a covenant with some unspecified local evil. When the settlers first arrived on the island, they were starving to death. Richard found a mushroom, and when he ate it, he was able to commune with whatever demonic entity resides on the island. The covenant was offered for the settlement’s salvation, and Richard signed the pact with his own “blood, feces, and semen” (cue Tom putting the paper down and wiping his hands). That’s how he was sustained for so long, despite being buried alive.
Richard cuts a faintly pathetic figure in Widow’s Bay Episode 7. He can barely stand. His skin is sloughing off in spots. He’s sometimes used as a comedic device, which reminded me a bit of The Boroughs over on Netflix. He mostly seems interested in seeing his children’s things, and he even comes up with a workable solution for doing away with the island’s curse. He believes that as long as there are men of his blood still alive, Tom will be bound by the covenant. However, since he’s the last of his line, if Tom sails him far enough out to sea, away from the boundary of the hex, he’ll die, freeing the island. And he seems willing to off himself in this manner for the good of everyone, although the fact that he buries his thumbs into the skull of the bust rendered in Sarah’s likeness should be a pretty significant clue that he’s not quite as altruistic as he claims.
Still, Wyck agrees to pilot the boat, albeit with the caveat of Richard being consigned to the coffin. He agrees, reluctantly, and after Patricia distracts Sheriff Bechir by stealing his Jeep, Tom, Wyck, and Richard hit the waves. The plan is to stop the boat two minutes out from the boundary of what Wyck calls “The Dead Zone”, a kind of local Bermuda Triangle, at which point Tom will row the rest of the way in a smaller boat. It’s a decent plan, if a little risky, since the island tends to be quite adamant about not letting anyone leave.
To build some suspense, Wyck tells Tom a story. As kids, he and his best friend, Mark — the brother of Gerrie from the Historical Society, whom Wyck describes as “his girl” — stole a boat and sailed out too far. Something struck them from below, something with a tentacle, and as he tried to get away, Wyck felt something grab his foot. He assumed it was the sea monster, but it was actually Mark, clinging on for help. Wyck kicked him off to save himself, a decision that has obviously haunted him ever since. The story is intended as a cautionary tale to talk Tom out of freeing Richard from the coffin, but by this point, Tom has already let him out.
As the boat gets more and more out of control, Richard becomes more and more attached to the idea of being alive. At the first opportunity, he attacks Tom and Wyck. They’re able to force him back into the coffin, but another lurch almost sends Wyck overboard, so Tom hands him a life ring and kicks him loose to focus on the coffin. He’s able to hold on as the boat passes the buoy into the Dead Zone. When he opens the coffin, Richard is naught but bones and dust. His plan worked. A soaked Wyck is able to climb back aboard, and the two men laugh hysterically at their own unlikely success. The curse should be lifted, theoretically.
Not so fast, though. In the final shot of the episode, we see a guest being evicted from the hotel, and the camera focuses on a painting in the background. The image seems to depict a capsized boat, with a figure in the sea being rescued by someone out of shot. This seems very much like the boat that Sarah and the children escaped the island in, implying that the island didn’t claim all of them. One of the kids — it looks like the older lad who hit Richard with the log in the previous episode — survived, meaning that Richard’s bloodline endures, and thus, so does the curse.
The bigger question might be how this connects to Tom. While he’s out gallivanting, Evan and Kelly snoop around Tom’s bedroom and break into his lockbox, hoping to find out what he has been lying about. Inside, Evan finds pictures of his mother, including ones of her holding him as a baby, and being present when he was a toddler. That kind of puts paid to the claim she died in childbirth. But how it all ties together is, thus far anyway, anyone’s guess.
